She stood as still as a waxen figure, if waxen figure could ever be true
to the power of will which her pose betrayed. When the ground was white
with small dry flakes she moved again. Her reverie, for lack of
material, seemed to have come to nothing fresh. She determined to prefer
her request again to Bates.

She walked round the house and came to the shed door. In this shed large
kettles and other vessels for potash-making were set up, but in front of
these Bates and his man were at work making a rude pinewood coffin. The
servant was the elder of the two. He had a giant-like, sinewy frame and
a grotesquely small head; his cheeks were round and red like apples, and
his long whiskers evidently received some attention from his vanity; it
seemed an odd freak for vanity to take, for all the rest of him was
rough and dirty. He wriggled when the girl darkened the doorway, but did
not look straight at her.

"There's more of the bank going to slip where father fell--it's loose,"
she said.

They both heard. The servant answered her, commenting on the
information. These were the only words that were said for some time. The
girl stood and pressed herself against the side of the door. Bates did
not look at her. At last she addressed him again. Her voice was low and
gentle, perhaps from fear, perhaps from desire to persuade, perhaps
merely from repression of feeling.

"Mr. Bates," she said, "you'll let me go in the boat with that?"--she
made a gesture toward the unfinished coffin.

His anger had cooled since he had last seen her, not lessening but